It still amazes me what a void there was at the top of the athletic department when Smart was hired. They literally had no clue how to build a football program that could compete at the highest level consistently, despite all the resources at their disposal.
Former Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity, who hired Smart, said his initial conversations with his new coach weren’t as much about what the Bulldogs needed to do to catch Alabama as what they needed to do to consistently win at the highest level.
“You found out really quickly that he wasn’t doing things for the sake of doing it because someone else has this or someone else has that,” McGarity said. “He wasn’t like, ‘They’ve got X-amount of people at Alabama, so I need X-amount of people at Georgia.’ It was a great learning experience for our administration to understand and then develop trust. He does what he says he’s going to do.
“They’re not just crazy ideas, they’re ideas that are well thought out and when you see it in place, it makes sense. Kirby was very articulate and very intentional. But it was never because someone else had this. It was always, ‘We need this for this reason,’ or ‘This is why I need these people for this reason.’ He had a plan, he executed the plan and so far it’s playing out.”
Shortly after Shane Beamer was hired to join Smart’s staff at Georgia in 2016, he noticed something familiar about the way his new boss was structuring his program.
“We literally implemented everything Alabama did, from the weekly schedule with the coaches to the practice schedule to the weight room program to whatever,” said Beamer, now South Carolina’s head coach. “It was identical. He didn’t have to say, ‘This is what Alabama did.’ You knew it. A lot of stuff we used even had the Alabama logo on it and was copy and pasted with the Georgia logo on it.”
Kirby didn’t do that out of some slavish devotion for all things Nick Saban. As Beamer went on to say,
“Give Kirby credit because as he got more and more comfortable, if there was a better way of doing things he would always listen,” Beamer said. “That was six years ago, and I’m sure now there are things they are doing that are better than Alabama. There were things that we did in Year 2 that were different from Alabama. Alabama came up in the sense that they were the SEC champions, they were the team that was at the top in recruiting year in and year out, so that was who you were chasing.”
He did it because nobody in Butts-Mehre had done the work to build a foundation for the football program. Kirby may have his shortcomings, but there’s no question Georgia football is in a much better place now than he found it.
Greg McGarity truly was not only the worst AD in Georgia’s long history, he may have been the worst AD in the history of college sports.
It’s going to take a long time for the Athletic Association to fully rebuild itself from all of the rest of his terrible hires; from a baseball coach that constantly underachieves to a basketball coach that has seen far better days to everything else.
Remember, if it weren’t for the Georgia boosters, McGarity would have hired SIDESHOW DAN THE CLOWN!!!
Worst. AD. Ever.
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I’m not going to disagree with you, Corch. It started before Mr McGoo arrived and just didn’t get any better. I blame the insidious asshole Adams.
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That’s a good place to start. Harvard of the South, isn’t that what he wanted?
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Not exactly. Yes, Adams wanted the prestige of running the Harvard of the South and he wanted to be considered an academic who kept athletics in its place, but he also LOVED the personal perks that came with being the president of an University that sent teams to big events such as the Sugar Bowl. He could gouge the UGA AA for extravagant travel and entertainment expenses for himself and family and friends. He loved what he could get from UGA athletic success.
Adams’s ego would not allow him to give the AD the space and authority to succeed the way Jeremy Foley at Florida or the guy at Alabama at the time whose name I forgot. A guy such as Foley would get too much glory for Adams’s taste.
I realize UGA improved its academic profile during the Adams years but the question is whether UGA improved because of Adams or in spite of Adams.
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I believe it was due to HOPE more kids stayed closer to home because of HOPE.
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I have read that allegation a number of times. I suspect it is true.
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I have read that allegation a number of times. I suspect it is true.
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Bingo Cholly (debbyb)!!!
100%HOPE (and Zell Miller)
0% Adams
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Because of the Hope Scholarship. Suddenly Georgia had a much larger pool of applicants so they could raise admission standards. Adams had zero to do with that.
Just like McGarity has zero to do with Kirby’s success.
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I can’t recall the Alabama guy’s name, either, but he kind of backed into Saban. Remember, he wanted to hire Rich Rod.
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Mal Moore.
And yep, he went after RichRod hard.
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The is him. If Rich Rod had said yes, Saban would not be at Alabama. Ironic, isn’t it?
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There are lots of stories out there about this but I tend to believe Mal Moore was always in on Saban. https://bamahammer.com/2017/05/10/alabama-football-saga-mal-moores-lengthy-pursuit-saban/
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Maybe he was, but he offered the job to RichRod and RichRod turned them down. So revisionist history FTW, I guess?
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RichRod did eventually make it to Bama…Jacksonville State, that is.
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Then you’re stupid.
Adams quadroupled+ the endowment. If not for Adams, we never afford Kirby and all of his improvements.
Just because he had a stupid take on the WLOCP name doesn’t take away his huge successes at the most important thing a President does: raise money.
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Nice to hear from you Mr. Adams!
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Great. Now do Jim Harrick.
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Thank you, Muckbeast, for that perspective. I agree that our endowment had not been great and in the last 20 years there has been an effort to increase it. I did not know I succeeded to that extent. What role did Adam’s play in that increase? I ask because I genuinely what the information. I don’t ask rhetorically.
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HA! You mean he alienated the foundation board to the extent that they disaffiliated with the University, then started a whole new endowment program run by his direct reports so he could use it as his personal piggybank? And then as soon as he left, the two entities remerged, a new capital campaign was launched, and UGA’s endowment broke $1BB?
It is hard to understate how much Adams -and his enablers- held UGA hostage for his own glory during his reign. We should all be thankful those days are over.
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You better believe it.
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It goes back further than that. Remember standing in line for HOURS outside Stegeman, waiting for 80-something year old women to process student season tickets?
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Not saying McGoofy was not the worst AD, but there are multiple contenders each and every year at other schools that are determined as hell to take the title.
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Truth be known, Kirby built Bama. He ran the show until he left. Saban gets the credit.
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If Archie Mater was anything but a drive-by troll then he’d take issue with that statement, Texballer.
I agree with you if for no other reason than to spite that cocksucker.
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Pruitt couldn’t articulate any of that. But he knew it and has seen it. He just couldn’t structure the ask in a coherent non inflammatory way. And Richt was always to conflict avoidance oriented to get or demand what he needed in a similar manner. That said, McGarity is full of shit on a lot of this. He knew. He just choose not to make it easy to have it.
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McGarity may have known it – but knowing and implementing are two different things – McGarity had no idea of how to implement or administer. Placeholder, he was a placeholder.
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Ryan, I followed that at the time but had forgotten. Thanks for reminding me.
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McGoo’s greatest achievement was protecting the reserve fund.
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Company man gotta company man.
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You misspelled “only,” SK.
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Georgia and Alabama are on different levels than 98% of programs…a lot of AD’s are obviously dumbasses.
Kirby, Saban, Dabo, etc. they are running the show, not the Ad’s.
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McGoo’s strength was his weakness…bend to the boosters to hire Kirby, then bend to Kirby on all things and and bend to whomever else that asserted themselves. The soft man act didn’t work for him all the time, but something something squirl finding a nut…
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I think your portrayal of him bending over for each is very apt. I can only assume “everyone else” includes the NCAA. He was great at bending over for them.
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Whenever I think about the SEC meeting where it was discussed for is to have back to back games at Auburn, all I can picture is McGarity at the snack table; toothpick in hand and a mouthful of cheese and deli meat, nodding in agreement to whatever they were talking about at the meeting table.
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Considering Greg Mediocrity didn’t bother to read the Ludacris contract, I strongly doubt he was even listening when the sec powers talked about switching the aubie game. He likely sat there nodding his head and discovered the switch later when it was in the news.
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LOL I picture the same but not even a nod, just a “thumbs up”
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Like the NCAA in the Gurley and Green situations?
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Yes. All of the above.
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If we win Monday night, the last thing I want to read or hear is that fuckstick McGarity taking a victory lap.
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And pardon my French. I wouldn’t want to upset RangerRuss.
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Um… that wasn’t French. French would be le fuquestique.
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My delicate sensibilities are as fragile as a snowflake on a holly bough on a frosty winter morn.
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It’s coming. Don’t worry.
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Absolutely gotdam right.
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The are a few of us on this board old enough to be adults following UGA when Joel Eaves was AD. We observed the value of what Joel Eaves brought to my alma mater.
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Another old guy. Cool!
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McGreedy was a horrible AD. True, the man could squeeze a penny to death, I’ll give him that but that’s it. He didn’t give a shit about athletics and you can’t be like that in the SEC! He got by with it until he couldn’t anymore. Thank you, Kirby, for not backing down and getting UGA back to where it needs to be. That alone is enough but here we are playing for a Natty! So, I’d say we owe Kirbs a big THANK YOU!!! GO DAWGS!!!
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Someone said somewhere that each coach since Goff has left the program in better shape than they found it, and that may be a generalization, but if we look at what’s happened at every other school in the conference, the case is strong.
Donnan regressed after 97, but it was good shape when Richt got there. Richt plateaud, but he also wasn’t the same kind of coach as Saban and Meyer. Kirby took a program that had some groundwork laid even without institutional support, and if we pull this off, folks like Richt and Donnan may also deserve some long term credit.
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Yes, Donnan left Richt with a bunch of talented players and Donnan laid a very good foundation. Would have been interesting to see what we would have accomplished if hd had not coached during the period Florida had its greatest success up to that point and Tennessee had not had it’s greatest since Neyland.
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Hold on – I thought the only missing piece had been institutional support, amirite? I mean if richt just had more money to spend it would have made all the different
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Texas is proof that all the money in the world means dick if you don’t know how to organize it.
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Contrast this statement with CMR paying assistant salaries out of pocket…
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Amen. This program is in the best shape in program history. Pay the man!!!
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There’s a lot to parse here, but it’s disingenuous to bag oMcG without acknowledging the obvious: when Richt asked for additional resources, McG had no confidence that he actually knew what do do with them.
This is where not being hyper organized and not detail oriented hurts: it doesn’t inspire confidence when you’re asking for money.
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